Tuesday,Jun 17 2008, 08:33:34 PMLOVING & LOOSING

I found this article in the centre pages of "THE FRIEND" (The independent Quaker weekly) 13th June 2008 Having met many friends who suffer from various forms of drepression I though I would copy & post it here. I hope someone finds this interesting and may be useful. Sorry it is so long though

"LOVING & LOOSING" by Eliza Johnson
" I want to offer a celebration of Lilly, my animal companion. Many of us who end up with a psychiatric disease diagnosis have very good reasons for not trusting humans any more. As a bridge, trust in Lilly became my only source of love. I had ten years of caring for and loving Lilly. When I tell friends that she died, they are sympathetic, but I want them to know how important she was to my life. She was beautiful, pure white, with large green eyes, nervous, but litter-trained. It only took her a few days to get settled, realising that it was her and me. She was quiet and calm. When she first stepped out of her box into her new world in 1998, I got a wonderful sense of a beautiful white light spirit arriving with her. She was a mature cat, from Battersea cats and dogs home. I was finally in my council flat, with a little garden, recovering from hospitalisation. Back then that meant police, being under section for a six-month detention, with a manic psychosis diagnosis, part of the bipolar diagnosed in 1991. It had by then become almost an annual event. Almost instantly Lilly started to change my life. She gave me so much and even her demands were gifts. Meowing at my door in the morning to wake me, for food and toilet cleaning. Much as I hated it some mornings when it was cold and dark and the poo stank in the tray, I did get up to do my duty, gave her the basics of love, cared for her physical needs when that was all I could manage. She gave me a way to learn how to look after myself by caring for her, when I believed I wasn't worth looking after. She showed me that even when I was unhappy I could demonstrate love and be kind, take care of her, play with her and enjoy her company. I still am frequently stuck in depressions where I can't get out of the house or go food shopping for myself. But having her, I had this very comforting dependant, as she needed me. I would go to the shops to get food for her and, while there, get some for myself. I would lug great bags of cat litter one month, bags full of tins the next. When unable to get out, I had her love and comfort and I would spend days watching telly with her on my lap. She would snuggle me at night before waking me up the next morning demanding I get active and feed her once again. I was finally needed by someone. Over time there were problems with her teeth; expensive operations pushed my finances to the limit. She helped me to make friends with my neighbours who I eventually risked asking if they would feed her if I went away. It was for a long weekend festival in 2004, very daring! It was my first independent travel since 1991. She became my anchor. The thought that I could be sectioned, leaving her alone, possibly left to die, compelled me to stay well so I could be there for her. A responsibility: I am certain that she played a large role in stabilising my health and helping me remain off all drugs or medication since 2000. Back then I was struggling to exist, my world shrank, I could not make friends. I had no one to talk to who was not paid to hear, yet she would silently listen, love me without judgment. She gave me so much as she enjoyed the sunshine in the garden, stretching her whole length in the warming glow. Or as she snuggled and played with me in the evening, she was giving me the love that I needed. She put up with the voice that chastised her, when I was grumpy. I could hear my mother's voice coming through me, unbidden. I would look at Lilly and thank God she was a cat, unable to understand the cruel words. Not a child, to be traumatised by the same cruel voice that had hurt me. How they would spit out of me, in moments of distress. Her voice in my mouth. Her reaction aped, me as a vulnerable, powerless child now attacking a cat. I see having Lilly to care for has helped me to understand how my mother's words damaged me, how I absorbed them consciously and subconsciously. Now I better understand the distress of my childhood, how it led to my having the diagnosis I have. I can't forgive my mother yet, but somehow I better understand the mechanical, automatic nature of this transference, better understand what, how, why my mother reacted the way she did to me. To have heard myself use the exact same cruel words she attacked me with, dredged up, no doubt, with the same lack of awareness in her. Only then to pretend she had not spoken them at all, deny everything, ashamed perhaps to hear her own mother leap from her mouth too. I understand now that at the heart of my troubled life is an inability to see myself as worthy of love and care, from others or even myself. It seems to me that the source of 'my problems' has been never feeling truly good enough to deserve love. Believing that love was competed for somehow, that my receiving love meant someone else would go without. That beyond being a troublesome child that needed 'breaking', there was nothing of me. There was actually nothing I could do to earn love, because there was none to be given. I learned that I did not deserve to receive love and care even from myself. My aim was survival and I did that. Having had quite a challenging route through the psychiatric system over the last eighteen years, still struggling with depression and insecurity, it is with great sorrow that I have had to say good-bye to my beloved animal companion Lilly who saw me through the last ten years. I invite us all to remember our animal companions and express gratitude for the love and joy they have brought us. In particular, in healing sadness, bringing peace and helping explore who and what we are. Let us all give thanks to the animals who allow us to be their carers, when often we have been convinced by so many others in our worlds that we are incapable of even looking after ourselves. Loving our animals heals us and teaches us to receive love too. With her death, sudden and unexpected as it was, I have been given another gift. I found it difficult to cry when my father died, with a family all watching out of the corner of their eyes and waiting for me to disintegrate. Tears came easily when I was faced with losing Lilly, this wordless, beautiful, soft, white animal who had loved nconditionally. That cleansing flow of emotion has washed and healed something else, something old and painful in me. I don't want to replace her and I'm taking time to appreciate the whole of who she was to me. For the coming months, I will allow my sadness, but in her memory, will not be overwhelmed by it. "

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